1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to online discussion forums and, more particularly, to quoting material from a source post for use within a reply.
2. Description of the Related Art
An online discussion forum (discussion forum) refers to a virtual meeting place such as a Web page, whether available through a public network, such as the Internet, or a private network, such as an intranet. Within that virtual meeting place, users post messages (posts). Other names for discussion forums can include, but are not limited to, Web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion groups, and bulletin boards. In general, users can upload posts to the discussion forum. These posts can be viewed by other users who may respond, in turn, by uploading response posts to the discussion forum. A sequence of posts, beginning with a first post and including all other posts uploaded in response to that initial, or root, post, is referred to as a discussion thread. Users need not be online at the same time to participate in a discussion forum.
When authoring a post in a discussion thread, particularly a reply to a post, it may be useful to quote text from an existing post of the same discussion thread. One way of quoting text from a post is to simply cut and paste the text. The user locates the post that contains the text to be quoted, referred to as the source post, highlights the desired text, copies the text, navigates to an open reply form, places the cursor within the open reply form, and then pastes the text. In this case, the user must manually enter any identifying attribution parameters corresponding to the source post, i.e. author name, etc.
One disadvantage of this manner of quoting is the manual nature of the operation and the time needed to attribute the quoted text to the source post. The user must perform a significant number of actions, i.e. clicks etc., as well as remember identifying information for the source post to properly attribute the quoted text. Otherwise, the user must navigate back to the source post to determine those attributes.
Another disadvantage is loss of context. When the user navigates away from the source post, the view presented within the browser is lost. Context indicating which posts were displayed, including the source post, as well as the text that was selected within the source post is lost. If the attention of the user is diverted during the quoting process, the user may inadvertently copy other material, thereby clearing the quoted material from the computer system clipboard. In that case, since the context is not maintained, the user would have to relocate the source post, select the desired text again, and then continue with the copy operation.
Quote buttons are another mechanism for quoting material from a source post. A quote button can be provided within each post presented in the discussion forum. When a user wishes to reply to a given post, a reply form is opened. The user can navigate to the source post, select the text to be quoted, and then activate the quote button located within the source post. The user then can navigate to an open entry form, where the text from the quoted post, along with information identifying the source of the quoted text, is inserted automatically.
The quote button, while addressing post attribution, does present its own set of disadvantages. One disadvantage is that including a quote button within each post of the discussion forum can have the effect of “polluting” the user interface. This is often seen as overkill in that a user does not wish to quote every post. It may be the case that the user does not wish to quote any posts at all. The quote button effectively becomes clutter for any posts that are not being quoted. Further, the quote button functions only if a single reply form is opened. If more than one reply form is open at the time the quote button is activated, the function is unable to determine which open reply form is intended target for the quoted material.
A variation of the quote button concept places the quote button only within open reply forms. Here, the user locates the text to be quoted, selects the text, navigates back to the reply form, and activates the quote button. The selected text is automatically inserted into the reply form along with an indication of the source post. While this implementation reduces overall user interface pollution, it still introduces an added control, and therefore clutter, within the reply form that may or may not be used. Moreover, both implementations of the quote button, like the manual technique described above, lack the ability to preserve context of the markup language page from which the quoted material is taken.
It would be beneficial to provide a technique for quoting material in a discussion forum in a manner which overcomes the deficiencies described above.